It’s no Oscars joke: Lake Havasu and Disneyland share common bond

By KTAR.com | March 5, 2018 at 5:18 pmUPDATED: March 5, 2018 at 8:53 pm

(Facebook Photos)

PHOENIX — Jimmy Kimmel may have ripped on Arizona’s Lake Havasu a bit during Sunday night’s Academy Awards, but we can only wonder if he knows about its ties to one of California’s most popular theme parks — Disneyland.

It may seem one of the top tourist destinations in the country would not share a thing in common with the northwestern Arizona lake or the city around it, though the latter has a decent tourism market of its own.

But the two in fact share a common bond in the form of a man named Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood.

Born in 1920 in Oklahoma, Wood eventually became a known name in the engineering world. While working for the Stanford Research Institute in 1954, he was approached by a man named Walt Disney who wanted to build a theme park in southern California.

He was instrumental in choosing the eventual Anaheim location for the theme park. He also oversaw the land purchase and the construction of the now-iconic destination.

Wood was there the day the park opened and oversaw its operation for about one year until he left the company. Some rumors said he embezzled money from Disney, though exactly why he left has never been fully determined.